Your Right to Know

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photofile photoAll the residents of Poindexter Village’s 414 units have been moved out. Housing-authority officials have said it would be too costly to preserve the 35-building complex.

Columbus’ historic-preservation officer recommends that at least four buildings of the
Poindexter Village public-housing complex be saved.

The recommendation is part of Randy Black’s federally required historic review of the Near East
Side complex before the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority begins tearing it down next
year.

Several neighborhood residents and activists have been fighting to preserve all or part of the
35-building complex that was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. They don’t want
what they consider an important part of the city’s African-American history to be swept away.

“The darn president came here and dedicated it,” said Chief Baba Shongo, a 66-year-old
neighborhood activist who lived there for six years when he was growing up.

Black suggested saving at least four of the brick buildings because, he said, clusters of
buildings with common green spaces are integral to the complex. The buildings are “a contributing
component to the development and history in that part of town,” Black wrote in a letter to the Ohio
Historic Preservation Office.

Bryan Brown, the housing authority’s senior vice president of business development, called
preserving four buildings “a rather high bar” because it could cost more than $3 million.

“If that’s the case, where do you get the $3 million?” Brown said. “What’s the potential market?
Is it residential? A mix of residential and business use?”

The housing authority is putting together a team of technical experts to determine how the
buildings could be reused.

The Columbus Landmarks Foundation also wants to save some of the buildings on the 27-acre site.
Nathalie Wright, its field representative, said the number of buildings that can be preserved is
unknown.

Some members of the Poindexter Village History Advisory Group want to see at least 13 buildings
saved, said Shongo, who was the host of a meeting of the group at his Near East Side gallery on
Wednesday.He wants 28 buildings preserved, believing that the demand exists for rental
properties.

Housing-authority officials have said it would be too costly — $42 million — to preserve the
414-unit complex. All the residents have been moved out as part of the authority’s efforts to close
complexes that are expensive to maintain.

Even if the housing authority sold the complex, there’s no guarantee that a buyer could afford
to invest to create a desirable development, Brown said. “What would that do to the neighborhood if
it remained a compound of poverty?”

Shongo and others want more than just a nod to the past. “We want a cultural center, a market,”
he said. “We need to get something out of this deal.”